Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Our class loves to make collaborative class books. This is one we made for our parents to look at as they waited their turns in the hallway to speak to me at our report card conferences.We made one based on the book, I Went Walking. It is written by Sue Williams and illustrated by Julie Vivas. I had two copies, so, I took one copy and used the front cover for the front of our creation.

I also found a wonderful singing version of this book on YouTube. The person who made the video turns the pages during the song, so a child can watch the book being sung to them. I created a QR code at QRstuff.com from the YouTube url and pasted it onto the front cover of the book.

This book is part of our Houghton Mifflin Reading program. We looked through this book and made a lot of inferences. It was so fun for the child to see if they could guess which animal would show up on the next page, based solely on the part of the animal the illustrator teased them with on each prior page.

We then read the book and retold the story. The students loved the repetition and opportunity to make guesses about the animals. To develop their oral language with this activity, I let students use iPads to record each other sharing about what animal they would see if they went walking. I reminded them that they had to speak using the full sentence that said, " I saw a ____ ____ looking at me."

Students then illustrated the animal they wanted to see when they went walking and wrote what animal they would see on the page using this format: I saw ________________________________. They filled in what animal they saw looking at them.

I then uploaded each of their videos to my YouTube channel and made sure to set the videos to "unlisted" so that only the people with the url could see the videos.

I created a QR code for each individual video and printed them out on a paper. I cut each person's QR code out and glued it to the page they were creating for the class book.

Finally, I added a picture of each child to their page.

Parents were instructed to download a free QR code scanner to their device so that they could scan the QR code from their child's page and watch their child read the page to them while they waited for their conference. I also offered my device if they either did not have one or did not want to download something like that to their own device.

I put the book together by punching the sides with a three-holed punch and placing rings through the pages. At the end of the school year, I can take out the children's pages and have them place them in their end of the year book that they add to each month. It will be a really neat collection of projects that they have worked on throughout the year.The students loved using the iPads in class to scan their friends pages and watch their friend read their pages to them.I hope you get to try something like this in your class. If you do, I would love to hear about what you created!Enjoy!

Saturday, January 11, 2014

I just LOVE how this penguin project turned out! I love the variation in each penguin's facial expression and body language. I can not take credit for this project, so I will point you to Patty Palmer's site, Deep Space Sparkle. It is an amazing resource for art ideas for your classroom.

I added my own variation on the directions she gave. I was drawn to the bright colored paints she let her students use. We used 5-6 colors of tempura paint, full strength. I did this with 6 students at a time. As each student made a stripe of paint across their paper, they passed the paint cup to the next student and painted stripes down their paper until the paper was covered. I like that it meant that the colors were in different order for each paper so that when they were hung up, the backgrounds didn't all match exactly.

We added a textured look to the painted background by taking two paper towels and laying them over the painted paper as soon as the student was finished painted. They patted the paper towel down and slowly peeled it off the paper, leaving a cool textured look to the paper. The other positive outcome of this added step was that excess paint was removed and the paper dried fairly quickly.

On the next day, students took Q tips and painted white tempura paint snow balls onto the dried colorful background. I let them mix in silver glitter tempura paint to give the "snow" a shimmery look. We then sprinkled silver glitter onto the paint. I had the student return to their seats to paint more white with silver drops onto the background so that the paper had some white and some glittered snow balls.

We then created the penguins out of construction paper. I had the students cut a penguin body out of black construction paper by explaining that they cut a "mountain" out of the paper. They then did the same thing on a smaller piece of white paper for the penguin tummy. They used the white paper scraps to cut out large eyes. I had them cut out any shape feet out of orange paper. They also used the orange paper to cut out a triangle beak. Some of them wanted to just cut out a triangle while others preferred to fold a square piece at the corners to make a 3D triangle beak.

I included the closeup because I love how it really shows the variety in the facial expressions of the faces. I also think it was cool to see how the way students placed their wings changed the penguin's demeanor. The penguin on the left looks pensive while the one in the middle looks mad. In the picture above, the penguin with the 3D bent beak looks like he got caught doing something wrong. These turned out so fun!

One of the final parts of this project called for creating an iceberg piece out of white construction paper and a blue oil pastel and Q tip.

The students drew a rectangle. They added a line at the bottom of the rectangle and colored it in dark with the oil pastel. They then used the Q tip to "push" the color up from the dark blue rectangle. They then also did it inward from the lines on the sides and downward from the line at the top. They were so impressed with this part of the project, I could have done only this part of the project and I could have made their whole day. One student exclaimed, "Wow, this is WAY better than getting a pet puppy for a present!" I had to laugh out loud at that!

They then glued the penguin onto the iceberg and then glued those to the painted background. I thought these looked great, but wanted a more "finished" look, so I matted them on black paper to make the color "pop" more and to put a focus on the black penguin in the middle. These made for a beautiful bulletin board and a fantastic art project with a multitude of art mediums for my students. Thanks to Patty Palmer at Deep Space Sparkle for the fabulous idea!!

I am always looking for new art ideas. Deep Space Sparkle has given me so many wonderful ideas to do with my students. Where have you found some wonderful art ideas?Enjoy!